Google Will Implement a Microsoft-Style Browser Picker For EU Android Devices (arstechnica.com) 59
Back in 2009, the EU's European Commission said Microsoft was harming competition by bundling its browser -- Internet Explorer -- with Windows. Eventually Microsoft and the European Commission settled on the "browser ballot," a screen that would pop up and give users a choice of browsers. Almost 10 years later, the tech industry is going through this again, this time with Google and the EU. After receiving "feedback" from the European Commission, Google announced last night that it would offer Android users in the EU a choice of browsers and search engines. Ars Technica reports: In July, the European Commission found Google had violated the EU's antitrust rules by bundling Google Chrome and Google Search with Android, punishing manufacturers that shipped Android forks, and paying manufacturers for exclusively pre-installing Google Search. Google was fined a whopping $5.05 billion (which it is appealing) and then the concessions started. Google said its bundling of Search and Chrome funded the development and free distribution of Android, so any manufacturer looking to ship Android with unbundled Google apps would now be charged a fee. Reports later pegged this amount as up to $40 per handset.
We don't have many details on exactly how Google's new search and browser picker will work; there's just a single paragraph in the company's blog post. Google says it will "do more to ensure that Android phone owners know about the wide choice of browsers and search engines available to download to their phones. This will involve asking users of existing and new Android devices in Europe which browser and search apps they would like to use."
We don't have many details on exactly how Google's new search and browser picker will work; there's just a single paragraph in the company's blog post. Google says it will "do more to ensure that Android phone owners know about the wide choice of browsers and search engines available to download to their phones. This will involve asking users of existing and new Android devices in Europe which browser and search apps they would like to use."
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There isn't even a Windows installer for Safari anymore, let alone one for most of the mobile devices out there.
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Let people all over the EU enjoy their US brand computer OS and browser without a government adding layers of extra complexity.
Any EU OS product should have the branding and staff ability to be part of a free and open marketplace without needing extra EU gov support.
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By placing and promoting products and services inside another brands services?
What next AC? Subsidies? Grants? To allow gov approved competition to grow?
But i will not help very much (Score:5, Insightful)
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Any entity/group/person can form a group and fok the chromium source code to make a non google controlled engine. It doesnt need the government to do that and there is nothing stopping that from happening now. The fact that nobody is, means that nobody wants to so government intervention isnt going to help here.
Even with Microsoft's desire and money (Score:2)
Microsoft sure wanted to have the dominant browser.
They have a hundred BILLION dollars.
Still, didn't make sense. They're using the Chrome engine.
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Back when Microsoft had to do it we still had 4 major browser engines. Now we are down to 2 and most browsers are Chrome skins.
Crazy stupid revisionist history right there. Google didn't write a browser themselves they simply used webkit and added their own "chrome". Google's contribution is literally the name of their browser.
Chrome forked off of Webkit to make Blink back in 2013, so there has been quite a bit of work done since Chrome's initial release. If you want to discount all the work that goes into something that was a fork of something else, well then I guess all the work on WebKt doesn't count as it was forked from KHTML.
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No-one is stopping you forking Chromium... But the reality is that a modern browser needs a huge amount of work to keep it competitive, and all the ones that are not supported by corporations or well-funded non-profits are dead or dying.
In other words if you want it to happen then the challenge is to build a non-profit with enough resources to hire devs to work on the problem.
Money and Google giving a fuck (Score:3)
Also, back then Microsoft made money by selling the OS and thus needed to keep users in the walled garden they were creating with incompatible IE. They needed users defaulting to IE, so the users get used to a world that runs on MS' ActiveX component and uses MS' specific HTML quircks and looks broken on any other browser, so the users will insist on having IE, and thus the users (or the companies they work in) will need to buy MS-Windows.
TL;DR: Microsoft's quasy-monopoly leveraged to give more money to Mic
I guess it was too hard? (Score:1)
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It's not the number of steps, it's the defaulting. Most people don't think about their search engine (or browser). So even one step that's not in their face is too many.
Google doesn't think neither. (Score:2)
Most people don't think about their search engine (or browser).
On the other hand, Google doesn't think about what browser people use neither.
They don't give a damn.
They only give a damn if people go online on the internet.
Because *then* Google will make gobs of money by marketing the shit out of there (Google has an appallingly large market share in the advertisement and analytics businesses).
That's why Google Chrome is free and available on multiple platforms, and why Google is also financing Mozilla Foundation.
It's not to appease anti-trust inquiries (though it helps
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Google totally cares. Chrome has allowed them to push for more control over the internet and they like it. For instance, unilaterally rolling out AMP in Chrome made it a new standard. Or Chrome making JS faster, because people were disabling it (and Google's tracking).
Frankly, you're crazy naive. If Google didn't care, it wouldn't have taken a 5 billion dollar fine to get them to do this. They would have done it when they got the eaerlier 1.7 billion dollar fine. How much is Chrome's monopoly in the t
Required standards vs fluff (Score:2)
For instance, unilaterally rolling out AMP in Chrome made it a new standard.
What the fuck is even AMP ?! I haven't heard about it much, and I can still function without major problems without it. Just shows how important this thing is... or not.
If you use web browsers complying to W3C HTML standrd, you're still okay.
As opposed to...
Or Chrome making JS faster, because people were disabling it (and Google's tracking).
Try disabling javascript nowadays. Just try it.
You'll see that half of the web doesn't display correctly.
Making JS faster has little to do with the tracking specifically (though faster JS in general means that tracking specific JS could do a little bit m
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It's not the number of steps, it's the defaulting. Most people don't think about their search engine (or browser). So even one step that's not in their face is too many.
wrong. Most people don't care. They want to USE their device, not spend time setting it up and configuring it. So even one step that IS in their face is too many.
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A 3 step process already [google.com] - settings, basics, search engine. Done.
Changing the search engine in Chrome does nothing other than change the search engine in Chrome. Hit the search button at the top of the home screen? Well you're back to Google. Using the Assistant? Google. Is Firefox your default browser but you use Bixby or your feral "assistant" of choice to open a link, guess where it opens ... did you guess Firefox? You're wrong. Google.
So yes, it's to hard. It's not a 3 step process. On many devices it's simply not possible to *not* use Google Search or *not* use Chro
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How is Android a monopoly? (Score:2)
When Microsoft got hit by the EU with the whole browser choice thing etc, they had a near-monopoly on desktop operating systems (in terms of the percentage of desktop computers that were running Windows as compared to Linux or OSX or other things).
Google on the other hand does NOT have a monopoly in the mobile OS space (unless the hundreds of millions of iOS devices out there as well as those like the Kindle devices running a non-Google fork of Android without all the Google bits and the few others still ru
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What has a monopoly got to do with anything? Are you under the impression that you need a monopoly in order to abuse your power? Are you under the impression that antitrust laws only applies to monopolies?
Let me help you: No.
As to Google's market power, there are several hundred million smartphones shipped every year. Some 75-80% of those globally run Android, some 50-70% of those fall under the Google certification scheme. So a fair chunk of the entire market was restricted due to a bundling practice that
Money is the key. (Score:2)
Microsoft's business was selling OS to desktop users (or computer manufacturer).
Google's business is not Android and is not Chrome.
They don't make money by selling Android (AOSP is even free and opensource), they don't make money by selling browsers (Chrome is free and opensource, and provided on multiple platforms).
They make money by :
- Regarding browsers:
having as many people as possible on the internet, when then Google can subsequently market the shit out of them.
Remember, Google has a frighten
There should be a choice of maps (Score:1)
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Normal people don't give a shit what browser they use. The world has conclusively shown the power of defaults matter. Now as for search engine, yes the vast majority will try to pick the household name.
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> Normal people don't give a shit what browser they use. The world has conclusively shown the power of defaults matter.
On MS-Windows the default is MSIE while 95% (or how much) of MS-Windows users immediately install Chrome.
Microsoft browser ballot (Score:4, Informative)
When Microsoft implemented the browser ballot, the NY Times reported the following [nytimes.com] (emphasis mine):
It'll be interesting to see what happens.